Side Colors III

by Isuna Hasekura

  I finally realized that the object that hit my head was a bolt of cloth, just as the woman reappeared from a room farther in the building.

  “…So, what is your business here?”

  She didn’t even bother with an introduction. My master quickly handed over the letter of introduction she received from Aman, at which the woman scratched her head in irritation, then walked abruptly over to a window. She didn’t seem brusque so much as she seemed to be trying to suppress her own emotions. She was merely opening the window to let in sufficient light to read, it turned out, but her every motion was sharp and irritable.

  At the very least, she seemed to harbor hostility toward travelers, which I knew my master felt much more keenly than I.

  I saw that the woman’s legs were trembling.

  If a wolf’s fangs killed the body, then human hostility was death to the spirit.

  “Hmph. A seamstress, eh?”

  “I-if I might be so bold,” said my master with haste, just as the woman spoke.

  I might not be human, but I knew my master very well. She fears being despised by others more than almost anything else. Her hands were balled up into tight fists as she tried to push that fear down. This must have been what humans call “pathos.”

  “…Be my guest.”

  “Please, ma’am! I’ve got a bit of an eye for wool, at least, so…er…?”

  “Like I said, be my guest,” said the woman in a bored tone as she tossed the letter onto the table.

  My master seemed stunned, unable to find the next words to speak. Her mouth opened and closed, and she looked like a mistreated puppy.

  “So?” The woman sat in a chair, looking much older than she was. She looked at the table, which was now illuminated by the light coming in through the window. From my low vantage point I could not see what was on it, but I saw the end of a tube poking out from one edge of the table and guessed that it was the bolt of cloth that had struck my head.

  No doubt the other tools one needed for tailoring were on the table as well.

  “Ah…no…er…” My master evaded the woman’s gaze and stumbled over her words as she tried to find a reply. She seemed on the verge of tears, and I glared at the woman with all the anger I felt.

  “What? You want a test, then?” sneered the woman. She had realized why my master was hesitating.

  My master’s thin body flinched away, and though I knew she had enough courage to face even the fearsome wolf’s howl, she couldn’t help but tremble at this woman’s obvious malice.

  “By all means, go right ahead. Cut cloth, sew seams, thread needles. You could even ready the dye for fur treatment. Shall I see if you have the skill to become a member of the Clothiers’ Guild of Kuskov? I, Guild Chief Ars Vidt?”

  My master could not manage any sort of reply when faced with the anger of the woman who’d introduced herself as Ars. She was cowed and overwhelmed and stumbled back awkwardly.

  “Sadly, we have no materials with which to work. Oh, certainly, if you want broken buttons, fraying thread, and bent, rusted needles, we’ve plenty of those. Though we can’t test you with those, can we? So what do you suppose we should do, hmm?”

  Ars laughed, but not because she was happy. It was because if she didn’t smile, the unbearable bitterness inside her would come rushing out. The wisdom my years had given me helped me to understand just why the woman Ars was acting this way.

  But my master did not have that understanding. Despite being overwhelmed by Ars’s sharp tongue, she summoned her courage and tried to press on—without having the slightest understanding of Ars’s mind.

  “I-if it’s money, I have—”

  I knew Ars’s rage even before it appeared upon her face.

  “Money! Hah! You suppose what you need can be bought with money? I suppose so! But listen, you—if all you need is beautiful buttons, beautiful cloth, and beautiful needles, you can have all of that without a single coin!” Ars pounded the table as she ranted. My master shrank away, frozen by the woman’s terrible force.

  Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do to help her—because I understood why Ars was so angry.

  She continued her raging. “Just turn the scriptures upside down and curse the name of God; then dig up the graves of the dead and scavenge their corpses!”

  Such terrible sarcasm.

  It was the practice of humans to bury their dead. They were usually buried in fine clothes, along with some valuable object or another. It was said that death was the beginning of an eternal journey, and if the many dead, in their finery, had departed from the town, then in a way their death was itself a sort of plunder.

  As the thought came to me, I realized that I was mistaken to be impressed with the neatness of the room. The room was not neat—it was bereft.

  The raging, exhausted Ars slumped over the table, then looked up with a thin smile. “But if you have money, how about it? You might at least pay the guild membership fee, eh?”

  It was a chilling smile, like she’d taken a short sword in her hands and cut it into her own face. Imagine, if you will, a face more gentle and mild than any beast’s could ever be twisted by such bestial rage.

  Nothing good could come of this.

  Worried for my master’s safety, I took the hem of her robe in my mouth and tugged. They say a drowning person will grasp even at straw. Who was to say that Ars, drowning in the despair the plague had wrought in her town, would not try to grab my master’s leg?

  At the tug I gave her robe, my master seemed to return to herself. That moment, a drop of water fell on my snout. It was very salty.

  “Come…you have money, don’t you?”

  My master took a step back, then another step, unconsciously touching my head. It was as though she were facing a wolf in a dark forest.

  Even if she couldn’t see her surroundings, no matter how much danger lurked, so long as she could be certain I was at her side, she would not fear.

  But what faced her now was a human whose hostility was more terrifying than the fangs of any wolf. Ars stood unsteadily. It felt like whatever lurked within her was about to take form and explode. I crouched, readying to leap at her.

  The situation was on the verge of explosion.

  Then there was a rough knock at the dry wooden door. “Ars! Ars Vidt!” A young-sounding man called Ars’s name.

  A frightened, cornered bird finds it hard to take flight. Ars made a sour face and turned away, sitting roughly back down in the chair as she clucked her tongue.

  The banging at the door continued, and seemingly hurried by the sound, my master turned and ran toward it. I dutifully followed, but couldn’t help heaving a disappointed sigh.

  “Ars! I know you’re in there! The stock purchase advances, get them together and—” The door opened with a suddenness, and the sound of the man’s shouting hit my ears.

  My master was just about to put her hand to the door to open it herself, and she drew back in surprise.

  “Whoops—” said the man on the other side of the door, his eyes going wide. His face was a rather amiable one. But the next thing he saw after my master was me, and he froze in his tracks.

  I was perfectly happy to take advantage of that and slipped past my master to emerge outside.

  The man who opened the door was a head taller than my master and fairly young himself. As I moved past him, he recoiled as though from something on fire.

  Once outside, I calmly turned around, and at my bark, my master finally came to join me.

  The man seemed about to say something to her, but at a glare from me he shrank back; and then, as though to mask his fear, he turned his gaze back inside the building. I didn’t know who he was, but there was no mistaking the unpleasant metallic smell about him. He put his hand to the door and looked back at my master one more time, then fully entered the building and closed the door behind him. I heard no voices after that, and my master and I were left standing in the middle of the street. The only reason I didn’t start walking
was because my master still couldn’t bring herself to grasp the series of events that had just befallen her.

  Even faced with a sudden, inexplicable accident or encounter, my master had always been able to cling to her staff—her work as a shepherdess. But now that staff was back at the inn.

  This left her a simple traveling girl instead of a shepherdess of such skill that some called her a witch.

  As it sank into her, she was on the verge of tears, and I did not bark to try and startle her out of it.

  Instead, as she started to walk unsteadily along, I nuzzled against her ankles, and when she reached out to pet my head, I was there.

  “…Enek,” said my master to me just as the sun was beginning to set. “I’m…awful, aren’t I.”

  My master could probably count on a single hand the number of times she had slept in a real bed. And one of those times, she quite literally cried herself to sleep. Her voice was hoarse, so she may very well have been crying while she slept, too.

  Just as I was thinking this, my master stepped over where I was lying by the bed and drank some water from a pitcher.

  “Half the town died in the plague, after all.”

  The copper pitcher was blackened and rusted with age and dented here and there from hard use. I could only be impressed that it didn’t leak.

  And of course, I was even more surprised by my master, who, despite being confronted with such hostility, was so kindhearted that she didn’t think ill of Ars.

  “…”

  She held the pitcher in silence for a while, and just when I thought she was going to go back to bed, she rubbed my back with her foot and came to sit on the bed’s edge.

  “I suppose I can’t become a merchant.”

  Merchants lie, cheat, and steal as a matter of course. It was a different sort of courage from that of my master, who would gut a sheep if need be. It was fundamentally impossible for her to take advantage of someone else for her own profit.

  I sniffed at my master’s nose. It was free of dirt and dust for the first time in a long time, but she pulled it away as though surprised.

  “So many people died…and I was thinking only of myself.”

  She fell backward onto the bed, and from the sound of rustling fabric that immediately followed, I could tell she was curling up under the covers.

  Goodness me.

  If she wasn’t so inclined to blame herself, her life would have been a little bit easier.

  Still.

  “Mm…Enek?”

  Still, I cannot deny that I like the way she is. That was the source of her most basic sincerity.

  “I’m fine…I’m fine, mm…Eek, that tickles…Hey, you!”

  I poked and played with her, and after perhaps three rounds of attack and defense, my master gathered me up in an embrace, nuzzling her face into my neck. “We can’t stop. Can we?”

  There was nothing I loved so much as the sight of her profile as she walked a field all by herself. I gave a growl and a bark, and she embraced me again, almost painfully tight, and then released me.

  “Let’s go see the bishop.” Her eyes were red from crying, but her smile was a genuine one. “Besides, giving our confession to a priest might do us some good, eh?” she continued, busily making herself ready to leave. She didn’t notice the way I’d curled my tail up, asking her if I was not strong enough for her.

  Master!

  “Come, don’t give me that look! Playtime is over!”

  I have never been more grateful than I was in that moment not to have the ability to speak!

  Upon leaving the inn, the sky was red. In our previous life, we would soon have been making ready to sleep.

  My master yawned a small yawn as we walked, no doubt the trace of the sleepiness she felt having cried herself past exhaustion. She noticed my glance and turned away, trying to cover up her yawn.

  The streets were as deserted as they had been earlier, but bathed in the light of the setting sun, they now seemed somehow even sadder. My master had no love for dusk, and as we walked alone through the empty streets, all the while she kept her hand on the back of my neck.

  But I could not blame her for that. I, too, dislike dusk. If you would ask me what about it I find distasteful, I would answer straightaway that it’s the length of the shadows. Atop a small hill and facing the sunset, how long my master’s shadow could grow! Such shadows made it difficult to discern the true size of things and made me pointlessly wary. At sunset, even sheep have shadows of terrifying length.

  In these deserted streets the only shadows were our own, and even so, I could not shake a certain unease about them. Eventually I sensed another presence in the street, and there met the wary gaze of a stray dog. My master finally let slip a sigh of relief when we arrived at the church and there, finally, saw the faces of other people. I understood her relief all too well.

  “I hope the bishop is all right,” said my master.

  I wouldn’t have had an answer for her even if she’d asked me, but given his condition the previous night, only God knew whether he would recover or not.

  Human bodies were fragile.

  I could hardly fail to notice the deep breath my master quietly took. Her strained expression was the proof of her resolve not to quail, no matter how poorly Giuseppe might be faring.

  “Ah, you’re the girl…,” came a voice addressing my master no sooner than we had entered the church.

  A group of plump women were gathered inside the open doors of the church, whispering about something.

  From what little knowledge I have, given the white cloth covering their arms and heads, they were probably responsible for caring for the two important men who’d come to their church.

  With such sturdy-looking people looking after one, it was easy to imagine how the feelings of weakness that threatened to extinguish one’s light might be brushed aside.

  “Er, I thought I might ask after the condition of the bishop.”

  “Ah, I see. He’s calmed now and is sleeping. Despite that terrible wound, he was up offering prayers until just a moment ago.”

  Among beasts and among humans, if there is a group greater than three, there will be a leader. The sturdiest woman spoke, and the others merely followed her lead and nodded.

  “Was the wound so very bad, then?”

  “It was. When we were awaked and rushed here, we thought it wasn’t too bad at first, but at his age…Still, the bishop has the protection of God, so he’ll surely recover soon.” She smiled a hearty smile as befit her robustness, one that would surely have elicited a smile from and given peaceful rest to a corpse. My master was terrible at false smiles, and even she found herself returning it.

  “And, er…what of the other man?” My master stumbled over this question, as she had seen earlier how terrible his wounds had been.

  “The wound to his head was not so very great a thing. There was a lot of blood from his head and nose, though, so it looked worse than it was. He still hasn’t woken up, but his color is good, so I think he’ll be awake soon.”

  It was not so rare to hear of a sheep falling from a crag or creek, losing consciousness, and quietly dying without ever waking again.

  In response to the woman’s relaxed manner, my master nodded seriously. “Might I be able to visit the both of them?”

  “Hmm? Oh, certainly. The bishop for his part has been unmovable from his holy duties, but still asked after you several times,” said the woman, then paused and looked at me. “And your black knight here, too.”

  That had to be why the women hadn’t seemed afraid when they’d looked at me. I was pleased with that, but for some reason my master seemed uncomfortable with me being called a knight. Master, are you not proud of the praise I’ve earned?

  “Enek, a knight…I don’t think…”

  “Not at all! It’s said that the actions of this little black knight of yours were very important in bringing the light of hope back to our town. The same is said for the young angel traveling with h
im, of course.”

  “Angel? Oh…n-no, I’m not an…” She blushed red up to her ears and looked down. She’d been called a spirit before, or a sprite, but always with a note of suspicion. Ever since then, she’d been unaccustomed to any sort of praise.

  I was starting to become indirectly embarrassed from my master’s own embarrassment, so I gave a bark and rubbed my nose against her leg.

  “Ha-ha-ha! See, even your little knight agrees there’s no cause for such humility.”

  “…”

  She didn’t seem able to put it into words, but as I looked at her still-downcast face, her expression was not displeased.

  “Anyhow, feel free to go have a look at the bishop’s sleeping face. They’ve both got rather beatific sleeping faces, you might know.”

  She spoke as though she were boasting about her own children, and I felt as though I understood why. The two men had returned hope to the town, and as such, were a source of pride. The good treatment my master and I had received was also due entirely to having brought that light here.

  And of course, it was only proper that work be repaid, so we ought to have stood proudly and accepted the honor. But what would they have done if they knew my master had been a shepherd?

  I prayed to the God that supposedly lived in this church that they would not ask how my master and I were connected.

  “Right this way, then.”

  I left my prayers behind as the woman led my master and me farther into the church.

  The man who’d employed us as shepherds was also a man of the church, and though we’d sometimes had occasion to enter a church, one could not call this one grand, not even as flattery.

  Though it was made of sturdy stone, the lack of maintenance was all too obvious. There were cobwebbed niches where the candles had gone unlit for a duration, which made me wonder how long it had been since anyone had touched these stone walls.

  The hinges of the wooden door that led to the room where the bishop lay had evidently rusted away; the door now leaned against the wall, and a simple cloth hung in the doorway in its stead.